Thursday, December 1, 2016

I was as freaked as you by the election
results, believe me. Successful
astrological prediction requires objectivity, and I didn’t have that, so I didn’t
attempt an election prediction. But I
was lulled into a sense of security by the prevailing wisdom that Hillary would
win, in spite of a lingering feeling of dread whenever I considered the
alternative.

Now that dread has taken a more concrete
form, and like everybody else in the world, I’m looking at least four years of
backwards motion. I’m accustomed to dealing
with backwards motion, since all the planets go retrograde occasionally. Sooner or later, they always go direct again,
and move forward into new territory. I
have no doubt that this will happen in the US as well.

But I’m still feeling a lot of
grief. I’m devastated that we’ll have a
racist in the White House, after eight years with the first Black
president. I’m sorrowful that the
president will be a misogynist, after a woman came so close to shattering that
glass ceiling. And I’m traumatized by
the election of a confirmed con man, during a time when so many are calling for
real change.

Astrologically, I blame it on Neptune,
the planet of confusion, illusion and hypnosis.
I feel that a large chunk of the country has been under a sort of spell,
and I didn’t credit it because it didn’t touch me, or most of the people I
know.

Yes, for a large part of the last year, Neptune
has been squaring Saturn, and so everyone has been looking for a messiah. Trump was an unlikely leader, all surface and
no content, but he recognized that it’s all about the energy you generate, and
he was good at exciting crowds, especially through corralling and focusing
anger. Seen from the outside, his
rallies looked eerily like the Third Reich, but experienced from the inside,
they must have been as satisfying as a good work-out (although I’m sure for
some people, some sick feelings lingered a while).

People egg each other on. And when a huckster can tap into mob mind,
and get everybody yelling and screaming the same words, he’s got a lot of power
at his fingertips. With the election
over, this energy is still emerging in the increased amount of harassment on
the street. This is not a myth. A friend of mine, an almost-bald cancer
survivor, has been threatened on the street because some men saw her as too
androgynous. This was in Maryland, but
there are reports like this from all over the country.

Will Trump keep fueling this anger
during his presidency? Will he keep his
mob focused on a common enemy? He’s more
likely to cause pain to his own followers than to actually hurt the objects of
their ire. There will still be as many
brown-skinned people sending their kids to school, as many women calling out sexual
harassment, as many gay people marching, but it will be many of his own
supporters who suddenly lose their health insurance or their Medicare
benefits.

But there are ways, used by all
politicians, to distract voters from all the ways they’re being screwed. One is war.
Trump may not be smart enough to think of that, but the people around
him will. So that does worry me.

The upcoming aspect activity is setting
a tone for the coming year. There are
two exact aspects in December, and both of them will be repeated twice more
during 2017. Both involve Uranus, the
planet of change. One aspect riles Uranus
up, while the other settles it down. So
this is the pattern in December, and a continuing pattern. One day, everybody is in an uproar, and
the next day, calmer minds prevail. Then, a
little while later, there’s another uproar.

The calming influence is the trine
between Saturn, planet of structure, and Uranus. This is a fiery trine, so it’s not exactly
mellow, but it does harness the innovative energy of Uranus, and move it
towards organizing, building systems, and long-range planning.

This could be a description of what
progressive people will be doing. It’s a
slow, steady campaign of anchoring a particular philosophy to real-life
consequences. It involves taking
responsibility for specific things, educating yourself and others, and combining
new technology with established wisdom. Everyone
will be practicing and teaching, but even with many shared objectives, this is
not about buying into a group mind. There’s a lot of scope for individual
freedom and initiative.

This aspect doesn’t just influence
political movements. There will be
plenty of business people who are able to combine a structured plan and an
exciting vision of the future. Even if
the US government maintains a regressive approach to global warming, there are many
individuals who will carry on towards a cleaner, greener future. There will be both independent efforts and
some loose coordination. This movement
may not involve as much screaming and yelling as the other side, but it could
still be a pretty exciting place for a young innovator.

And then there’s the other aspect, the
one that shakes things up, an opposition between Jupiter and Uranus. This is all about the rebellious, restless
energy of Uranus, so it signals some pitched battles. The confrontations that are forming in
December will be forerunners of those we’ll see in 2017.

For one thing, the legal challenges that
the Trump administration will have to parry may be considerable. Already, there’s a bump in questions about
Trump’s conflicts of interest, the relationship between his businesses and his
new position, and some of these come from sources that are harder to
ignore. Would Trump give up his
businesses to keep the presidency?
Somehow, I don’t think so.

For progressive movements, this Jupiter/Uranus
opposition signals situations in which the message can be broadcast more
dramatically, through action. We already
see this at Standing Rock, where people are protecting their homes and water
supply, but also making a powerful statement against additional oil delivery
infrastructure.

I’m not sure how this can end well, however,
once we have a Trump presidency. I worry
that an unsympathetic president will use the indigenous people as political
footballs, reviving that old cowboy vs. Indian storyline for his own use. Remember, his supporters are happiest when
they can vent their rage at a target.

But if anything, the explosive Jupiter/Uranus
opposition shows that people will not take suppression lying down. People will be standing up and fighting for
the things that matter to them. And whether
we win or lose the open battles, the organizing work will resume, a vast underground
network of practical, concentrated intention.

Storms can come along and shake a tree, and
sometimes they can topple it. But it’s the length and depth of the roots
that give it stability. So for this
month, and for the next year, my advice to everyone is to find your place
somewhere in those roots.

Friday, October 28, 2016

Here we are, finally at the brink of
November. I’m not sanguine, I’m still at
the edge of my seat, even though all polls say that Hillary Clinton will
win. I’m not objective enough to make
any kind of astrological prediction about that.

In a couple of days, it will be
Halloween, the quintessential woman’s holiday.
Like many other holidays, it began as an important pagan celebration,
but unlike the others, it’s never been entirely papered over with Christian imagery.
In astrological symbolism, this time of
year – the sun’s passage through Scorpio – is connected with what is
hidden. It’s the time when what lies
underneath comes most alive.

The pagan tradition is one that values
the natural world. This is an
interconnected world which keeps its balance through a constant cycle of giving
and receiving. This philosophy has been largely
replaced, in much of the globe, by one of hierarchy and exploitation, with
women disrespected, equated with the earth and nature. And now we are so out of balance that we are in
the process of destroying our own habitat and our species.

Looking under the surface, I see an ancient and holistic tradition buried
under centuries of patriarchal dogma. I
see oppression directed towards women’s bodies, softness and vulnerability met
with violence.

I am not so naïve as to think a woman
president will allow us to retrace our steps to that earlier time. There have been women in power before, and
Hillary Clinton is a woman of acute contradictions. She has worked hard on women’s and children’s
issues, but she’s been attacked relentlessly whenever she dropped the “traditional
feminine” pose and showed her strength.
And so she has lost much of her own spontaneity and trust along the
way. It’s not surprising.

This election has been a real test of
feminism, not just because Hillary Clinton is the first woman to approach the
US presidency, but because her opponent is such a misogynist. He pretty much covers all the classic
misogynist postures. He belittles women,
condescends to them, exploits them sexually, and is clearly grossed out by all
female bodily functions. His posture of
unrelenting dominance is an illustration of one of the most dangerous
tendencies of modern humankind.

He represents something that must be
peeled away, in order for us to regain our connection to the earth. We need to rediscover what is hidden beneath,
the underlying ground of human emotion. In this Scorpio season, we can turn to Hillary
Clinton, a woman with the sun, Mercury and Venus in this sign.

I also have a Scorpio sun, and I
completely understand Hillary’s desire to keep parts of herself secret, to
control what the world sees of her. This
is the sign of people who feel intensely but do not reveal easily. And Hillary Clinton has the moon in Pisces,
the most sensitive of water signs, so she is doubly vulnerable on the personal
level. No wonder she approaches
everything so carefully and strategically.

And this mistrust is met with a certain
amount of mistrust on the part of the people.
What’s underneath that reserve? For
many people, it feeds into their conspiracy theories. They say she’s murdered people, plotted against
anyone who challenges her, frozen people’s hearts with a glance. They say that she’s a witch, an excuse for
persecution that goes back centuries. They say she’s a practicing lesbian. (We’re
considered dangerous because we’re harder to bribe.)

To walk in the halls of power, you need
strong armor. Hillary has that. And still, through her life, she’s put much
of her energy into the bottom-line issues that have to do with easing suffering. So, as I prepare to go to the polls, I’m
thinking: More power to her.

This month, there’s a square between Jupiter
in Libra and Pluto in Capricorn. Pluto is
the ruler of Scorpio, and the planet of shadows, underground rivers, deep
transformations, secret powers, and unconscious desires. Jupiter, on the other hand, focuses on what
is overt, prominent, and socially acceptable.

Jupiter also represents the people’s
picture of themselves, the philosophy of a community. With Jupiter squaring Pluto,
there will be growing tension between the outer image that the country is
presenting, and what’s going on underneath.
After the election, I can see the Republicans starting right away to
conspire to retake power, to try to reestablish their past empires. But there could also be healthier and more
holistic movements tunneling underneath, like earthworms aerating a
garden.

And I’m sure there will be some overt
grabs for power, as well. At the point
where I’m standing, this crossroads between a woman and a woman-hater, I’m
still not sure what will happen. I’m as
nervous as a temple healer, watching soldiers from the North destroy statues of
the Goddess, knowing they will destroy women next. This old fear and anger is buried too, and I
hope it has been composted into wisdom by the ages. I don’t want revenge, only a world where both
young and old women are free, freer than even men are now.

And in this coming month, I’m ready for
whatever my deep self has to teach me.

Thursday, September 1, 2016

“I’m worried about the big march in
Venezuela today. I hope it doesn’t turn
violent.”

My wife, sitting on the edge of the bed,
reached down to tie her shoes. This is
the interlude when we check in with each other – after her morning shower,
after I make the bed, before she drives off to work, before I make myself
breakfast and start writing. We talk
about our dreams, our plans, the world, anything we’re thinking about. Often she’s thinking about Venezuela, her
homeland.

“When does the march begin?” I
asked.

“It’s already begun.” She told me that
people have been coming into Caracas for days, including tribal leaders from
the Amazon who led a ritual this morning.
She paused to send me links to a bunch of newspapers and websites - El
País, El Tiempo, BBC Mundo. I read that
they’re calling this event The Taking of Caracas, and that they’re expecting a
million people in the streets.

I tell her, “It’s a powerful day today,
with a solar eclipse. That doesn’t
necessarily mean it will be peaceful.
But it does mean something important is beginning.”

The highway from the airport – a highway
that my wife used to travel every day to go to work, a steep but beautiful
highway with a view of the Caribbean sea to the north – is now taken over with
tanks and anti-riot equipment. Demonstrators are coming in on buses, although
sometimes these buses are held up by police roadblocks. It’s safer to be riding in the buses of
people recruited by the government for a counter-demonstration. Opposition leaders have been jailed, or moved from house arrest to prison.

They are saying that the march
will be peaceful. They’re marching for a
referendum which could revoke the powers of the president, something that’s
allowed in the constitution. But the
government is drawing parallels between today’s march and the rally in 2002
that turned into a coup, temporarily ousting Hugo Chávez. Earlier this week, all TV stations were
obligated to show a documentary about that event, entitled “Keys to a Massacre”.

The march’s goals seem fairly
abstract. The referendum is being held
up by the government’s electoral body, and once it's allowed to proceed, the signatures of 20% of the voting population will be collected, and this will force a new vote. But the basic issues are not abstract. Food has shifted from a basic human need to a
challenging struggle, involving being in the right place at the right time,
standing in line for hours, managing not to get robbed, and still getting
ripped off in the end by monstrous inflation.

And this eclipse in Virgo is all about
the basics – nutrition, health, daily life.
It’s about the little things which, day by day, become the foundation of
the future. What kind of future is built
on fear, anger and scarcity? A solid
foundation comes from children with strong bones, the free time to learn new
things, and the good will that comes from a full stomach.

So we are at a crossroads. Which future are we engaged in building? There is an eclipse at the new moon today, and
another eclipse at the full moon on September 16. Both of these engage the Virgo/Pisces axis,
the tension between small details and larger visions. The Virgo side boils down to: how do we make it work? How do we organize our society so that it
gives us the basics that we need? The Pisces
side is about empathy, compassion, and spiritual awareness, the softening
agents that encourage us to work for the common good.

In addition, Mercury is retrograde for
most of the month, until September 22. So
the focus is on reclaiming. There may be
many important inventions that haven’t yet been developed, and that will play
a crucial part in our future. But
there are many more methods and techniques that we already know about, things
we don’t use because there’s no profit involved. We need to reclaim these basic skills. We need both Virgoan skills – how can we do
it better? – and Piscean skills – how do we connect to each other and create
one shared, peaceful earth?

In addition, Jupiter changes signs in
September, something that only happens once a year. The Jupiter sign points to social
preoccupations, and gives a particular direction to collective improvements. For the past year, Jupiter’s been in Virgo. What have we seen during this time? For one thing, and for the first time, all
nations agreed to reduce climate emissions at the UN Climate Change Conference
in Paris.

Will the commitments made there be
enough to save us as a species? Maybe,
maybe not. But Virgo is all about small
steps. At least we’re trying to figure
out a sustainable way to live on this planet.

This month – on September 9 – Jupiter is
entering Libra, a much more abstract sign.
At its best, it’s the sign of equality, peace and partnership, and we
can hope for new peace initiatives and a stronger commitment to justice.

But while Libra is a sign that fosters
cooperation, it can also give a tendency to try to be all things to all
people. Libra gives the ability to see
both sides of any equation, and this can give a gift for compromise and
diplomacy, but it can also mean endless debate and argument. You can see this with Donald Trump, who has Jupiter
in Libra, and is skilled at playing different factions against each other.

Is it good for Trump that Jupiter is
entering the sign it occupied when he was born?
I have to say yes. Does this mean
he’ll win? I certainly hope not! I have to note that Bill Clinton has Jupiter in
Libra, and it was in this sign when he won the presidency. But I’m not despairing. Hopefully it just means that the election and
its aftermath will make Trump richer than ever, and that will count as a win in
his book.

What will Jupiter in Libra mean for the
opposition in Venezuela? This sign tends towards balance between
opposing social elements, so it won’t necessarily mean an immediate
victory. However, we can look to
Venezuela in 1945. Then, under Jupiter in
Libra, there was a coup by Acción Democrática, a party that was still operating
in Venezuela when I lived there fifty years later. So sometimes the balance shifts.

The eclipses of September do signal a
change. For those living in the most unbalanced places in the world, this shift
could just be a matter of a million people congregating in the street, giving
weight to their basic human need for sustenance. We humans been coming together to help each
other eat for millennium; it’s something
we do. But when we obstruct each other’s
access to food, something has to give.

Monday, August 1, 2016

We’ve been going through a period of
hype, hope, glamour and confusion, with the Saturn/Neptune square, and it’s not
over yet. In fact, it won’t be over
until early October, giving people one short month to come to their senses
before the election.

Saturn is the Crone planet, the one that
represents the Wise Elder. It’s all
about the ability to take responsibility, to build clear structures, to
discipline yourself in order to reach certain goals. Saturn is the planet of caution, experience,
and realism, so it’s pretty clear which candidate is more Saturnine.

On the other side is Neptune, the planet
of mysticism and imagination. Neptune represents
the fantastic illusions of, say, the Wizard of Oz. Pay no attention to the man behind the
curtain. But even though he keeps making
awkward moves and showing who he really is, the glamour holds. He could shoot somebody and they’d still vote
for him. That’s the magic of pixie dust,
a lovely blurry filter made up of expensive suits, good television angles, and
spontaneous superlatives.

To be adult, or to live in a
fantasy? That’s the choice that’s
underlined by the Saturn/Neptune square.

Of course, there’s another way to see
this. Saturn is also the planet of limits,
restrictions, and fears. It represents
an earthy reality, enclosed within a set of established laws. It gives little room for change. It’s safe, but maybe too safe?

Neptune, on the other hand, is odd, tricky, fey, with the ability to
change its shape. It represents the
yearning for something cosmic and beautiful, something beyond our current
choices. A celestial city, a dream of
peace. And there’s nothing Neptunian about
the brutish tendencies shown by the Republican candidate. So you could say that Bernie is the Neptunian
choice, and the impossibility of him being elected just adds to that - because Neptune
is the planet of beautiful fantasies.

Bernie himself is a much earthier and
more pragmatic guy. He’s got a lot of
air signs in his natal chart, so he’s definitely an idealist, but he’s not
particularly woolly or dreamy. With his Neptune
conjunct the north node in Virgo, his destiny in this life is to attract
dreamers and then point them towards concrete, human-sized solutions to
problems. This has been somewhat
flattening for some of his supporters.

With every illusion, disillusionment
naturally follows. This is not to say
that dreams don’t sometimes come true, but this only happens when there are at
least a few real, solid ingredients in the formula. Since Bernie is an earthy guy, his candidacy
didn’t lack for concrete proposals, and there’s a good chance that most of them
will be adopted through the years. But the
illusion was that this country was ready for a revolution, an actual dramatic restructuring
of the economic hierarchy by a Socialist.
And the people who are in the worst shape, who might be ready for
revolution, don’t necessarily want an old white guy leading the charge.

On the other side, the Republican
candidate has nothing particularly solid in his repertoire, so there’s really
nowhere for his acolytes to go when it all falls apart. He brings up a nostalgia for a time that was
simpler for white folks, when the rules were clear and nobody else had any
rights to speak of. His constituency
consists of a bunch of people whose time has passed, but who are unwilling or
unable to embrace another way of living.

You could say that Neptune is about
living in service to a dream. Some
dreams may be worth serving, because they make you and other people happy. I think artists embody this. But there are other kinds of unreal
constructs that are less innocent, and racism is one of these. It’s a world view that postulates all kinds
of magic powers to one group, and pins unwieldy caricatures and angry
projections onto others. This country has
been caught in this bad dream, this skein of illusions which is going through a
long, slow unraveling process. And those
who are clinging to it are destined to fall the hardest.

But as Neptune weaves its spell on us, Saturn
keeps finding the words, ideas, and practical necessities that bring us down to
earth. Saturn is about looking around
you and seeing what’s really going on, and because of that, Saturn can be
damned depressing. This is not an easy
time for a lot of people, and it’s probably easiest for those who are most
removed from reality. So if you’re
feeling some pain, congratulate yourself.
You’re dealing.

In August, Saturn stations, which means
it appears to hold still. It stays at 9°
Sagittarius for most of the month, so if you have any planet close to 9° in any
mutable sign (Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius or Pisces), you’ll be more affected by
this square. You’ll be feeling Saturn’s
static voice in your bones, while Neptune’s haunting tones seduce you at odd
moments.

But for all of us, this is a time when
we're aware of the two sides of this conflict.
Saturn says, “This is the world.
Get used to it!” and Neptune says, “None of this is real at all.” Can we find a meeting place between these two
voices? Can we find magic in the world,
and a little more of the world in our magic?
Can we be gentle with ourselves as our bubbles burst, rather than
castigating ourselves as fools, or seeing the world as too sharp and cruel?

It’s just the world: a rocky place with enough gravity to keep us
anchored here, while strange thought-balloons drift over our heads. The wind catches them and they turn into
wisps: feelings and memories and
stories. We have to let them go. There
will always be more.

Friday, June 3, 2016

I’ve officially turned into an old lady
since last month’s blog, since I’m walking with a cane now. It’s a knee problem, which I keep insisting
(to myself and to anyone in earshot) is temporary, but still the cane is a
marker, especially combined with flyaway white hair and skin sag. I’ve been a granny for nine years now, but
suddenly, I look more like everybody’s definition of one.

It’s weird to be moving so slowly in
such a fast-moving time. There is so
much happening, in my own life and around me, that it’s hard to keep up. I just got back from Womonwrites, my
much-loved lesbian writers’ conference, and I’m about to go to Where Womyn
Gather, a festival of womyn’s spirituality.
All of these things involve a higher intensity of thinking, feeling,
talking, connecting, and driving – and I am trying to do it with very little
standing or walking.

I have now become aware of the intricate
strategies used by disabled women.
Sisters, I never before realized the care and focus with which you go
through your days. Whatever else I’m
learning from this, it’s broadened my awareness in that area.

It does make sense that I’m
simultaneously dealing with slowness and speed, because we’re all handling some
very contradictory influences this month.
The new moon on June 4 sets the tone for the month. There’s a mutable grand cross, and this is
sensitive, changeable energy. It rushes
here, rushes there, gets distracted midway, changes its mind and heads back the
way it came. It’s like a flock of butterflies,
random and inspired.

And yet one of the planets involved is
Saturn, the planet of resistance, delays, and obstruction. Saturn keeps trying to formalize things, to
turn all these skittish ideas into some kind of resolution. What are we doing? Where are we going? We need a plan!! The other planets in the mutable grand cross
just keep zinging through the air, headstrong, excited and heedless, while
Saturn tries to catch them. Yes,
Saturn is like a big butterfly net, determined to pin things down.

If Saturn is sitting on one of your
planets, then you may be feeling stuck, while all around you, there’s a
bewitching, confusing, bewildering fluttering of wings. If you have planets in the middle of any
mutable sign (Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius or Pisces), this will particularly affect you. I do, and I’m definitely
fingering Saturn as responsible for my uncooperative knee. Of course, Saturn is also sponsoring whatever
wisdom I’m supposed to glean from this.

The other planets are Jupiter and Neptune. Jupiter is all about abundance, enthusiasm,
and growth, the antithesis of Saturn.
With Jupiter and Saturn squaring each other, there’s an ongoing tension
between the urge to surge forward and the need to hold back. Jupiter is in Virgo, the most sensitive of
the earth signs, the one that is drawn to heal, fix and organize whatever is
sick, broken, or chaotic.

The Achilles heel of Virgo is a sense of
absolute certainty about what needs fixing, and how to do it. And you are probably seeing this all around
you. People are absolutely convinced
they know how to make things better for their friends, family, the country, and
the world, and if everybody would just get on board and use these particular
tools and methods, everything would be okay.
Jupiter in Virgo, especially when it’s dealing with all this resistance
from Saturn, can be zealous and dogmatic.

And Neptune is the planet which rules
hypnosis, illusion and imagination, so there could be a shortage of
clarity. All those people claiming they
know the one true path – well, they could be completely deluded. You have probably been thinking that at
least half of them are, mainly the half that don’t agree with you. I think this too. Why are people so convinced they’ve found
their Messiah? That never works out
well. Or is it just that I lack
faith?

Whatever you can say about this
rambunctious, noisy period, at least it’s very much alive. With the Gemini new moon ushering in the
month, the level of talk and writing will rise.
New ideas are popping up everywhere, some of them completely
nonsensical, some of them brilliant. The
future is taking shape, and it’s hard to see, because the images are changing
at breakneck speed, with a prescient idea one second and a crazy notion the
next. We all know that some new possibilities
are coming into being, but how to separate them from the static?

This is a time to reconcile faith and
intellect, and to work on untangling many other internal contradictions. A mutable grand cross contains all four of
the elements, so fire, water, earth and air are jockeying for position. Mental clarity is burned away by passion,
passion gives way to hard realities, reality is denied because of emotional
needs, and deep needs are asked to
justify themselves intellectually.

But the elements can work together, and
each can grow during this period of testing.
If you can stay intellectually clear in the face of passion and anger,
you can keep learning. If you can be
passionate in the face of pragmatic realities, you can remain inspired and
involved. If you can maintain your hold
on reality even though your feelings are churning, you are truly grounded. And if you can believe in the truth of your
emotions no matter what your rational mind is telling you, then you’re in touch
with your own intuitive wisdom.

I don’t have to tell you to keep
moving. There’s nothing but movement
this month. There are some strong winds
that keep stirring everything up, rearranging any order you set up for yourself. For myself, I may be walking very slowly, but
there are still ways that I can fly.

Monday, May 2, 2016

I wake up in the morning when my wife’s second alarm goes off. (I usually manage to sleep through the first
one.) She drags herself out of bed and
into the shower, and I pry my eyes open and grab my phone. I thumb up some music. This morning the first song was a Cris
Williamson tune that I fell in love with more than thirty years ago. After
that was a modern cover of a song that was a hit sixty years ago.

Yes, there are five planets retrograde right now. So if you feel that you’re easing a little
more into the past every day, that’s why.
This is the time to catch up on yourself. Rediscover the things you loved, especially
the things you’ve allowed yourself to forget.

For myself, I’ve felt this strong desire to set my life in order. There are lots of things that have gotten
more and more disorganized through the last few months. What is in that pile of papers, my “Deal With
This Sooner Or Later” pile? Maybe I
should have dealt with some of that stuff by now?

There’s private history, and then there’s collective history. Every day as I check my facebook feed, I find
links to political essays. My friends
who are Bernie supporters post the most, and I read everything. I often find myself searching through the
internet, wanting to find out more about the things they reference. “Is this really true?” I ask, and then I look
for more information. Often it’s true,
but not the whole truth. I follow the sedimentary
layers back into history. Sometimes I
remember the atmosphere at those times.
I remember what it was like.

My friend writes an eloquent essay against incrementalism, claiming
that all the bad things have happened suddenly, so why should we take an
incremental approach to the good things?
But when I look back, I see changes – both negative and positive – as slow
processes.

Of course, some things happen quickly.
In my 64 years, there have been pivotal moments – such as the Roe vs. Wade decision, the Berlin Wall falling, apartheid in South
Africa ending, the first African-American president, and the Supreme Court giving
gay people the right to marry. But even
the things that happen quickly are built on years of organizing, and are followed
by years of backlash and re-organizing.

So I guess I am an incrementalist, a practical liberal, since I haven’t
jumped into the Bernie fervor. The
discovery that I’m not as much a leftist as I thought I was has been a little
disconcerting at times. (I also thought
I would have a lifelong exemption from joint pain if I kept doing yoga. Ha ha.
Silly me.) But with all these
planets retrograding, it makes sense that I’m backtracking, examining
everything more closely.

The month begins with four planets in Taurus, a cautious influence. Taurus is the sign of preparation, the
gardener’s sign. it’s an earth sign, and
it is conservative in the same way the earth is conservative. There’s change, but it happens within a particular
repeating pattern, and the pattern only shifts slowly over time. Eons pass, the earth floats through her
cycle, and we humans, like all the other species, have to find our niche, and change
ourselves to adjust to the conditions here.
And when we aren’t able to do that, we’ll be toast, and other species will move
in to fill our spot.

Even though Taurus is generally a slow-moving sign, resistant to
change, there are two configurations that point to May as an important month. There’s a great trine in earth signs, and a
T-square in mutable signs, and both of these are likely to manifest in
historically important events.

Great trines show successful events, those that are carried through to
fruition and that have a strong effect.
There are always at least two ways to look at everything that happens,
so this doesn’t say that a successful event will be a good thing. But it does show that, this month, something could happen that marks a turning point in a long, slow
process.

The Boston Tea Party happened under a very similar great trine in earth
signs. The demonstration not only worked
– they managed to dump all that tea without falling in and drowning themselves –
but it lit the fuse on a revolution.
However, you could say that the American Revolution wasn’t that good for
everyone. It solidified a hierarchy of
rich white men in this country, did it not?

The other configuration, the mutable T-square, is thornier, more
disruptive, more confusing, and more conflict-prone. And this T-square, since it involves a hard
aspect between Jupiter and Saturn, could indicate economic downturns. But the question is: for whom?
Since most of the wealth in this world is gathered into the hands of a
very few, they are the most likely to lose under this influence. Will there be further repercussions from the
Panama Papers? Is this about the
continuing agitation from the Bernie Sanders camp?

Even though some dramatic events are likely, the effect may not be instantaneous. Since there are so many retrograde planets,
and since Jupiter moves hardly at all in May, there’s a sense that everything
is fixed in space and time. We’re all so
busy looking backwards that we may not notice the crossroads until we’ve long
passed it. Then we can look back and
say, “Hey, that was a time of change.
And we were there.”

Thursday, March 31, 2016

The world is young. This morning
I noticed that our azalea bushes are getting ready to bloom. The grass is growing out and getting raggedy. Rabbits appear, nibbling on all the new weeds
in our yard. The birdsong is louder, and
my windows are open.

The coming month is full of fiery influences. The fire signs are fresh, impetuous,
spontaneous, playful – like spring. They’re
also hot-blooded, impatient, and sometimes combative. Throughout April, we have four to five planets
in fire signs. The second strongest
element this month will be earth, and this helps ground the energy somewhat.

Of all the fire signs, Aries is the most rambunctious and dynamic, and
there will be a strong Aries influence all through April. So there will be plenty of passion,
especially among the young. I remember
what it was like being young, that constant high level of excitement, anxiety
and confusion, and the endless search for a larger meaning. Young people are vital, creative, full of
promise - but also so easily exploited, so often lacking in worldly power.

Ever since the sun entered Aries, there’s been a spate of deadly terrorist
activity - in Belgium, Turkey, Iraq,
Yemen, and Pakistan. In Lahore, sixty-nine
picnickers died, many of them young, many children. And although I know nothing of the suicide
bomber who carried out the attack, it’s likely he was also young.

The fire signs are the heroic ones, the ones who want to demonstrate
their courage and dedication to noble principles. When a suicide bomber is surrounded by people
praising him for this “selfless” act, how can he turn away from it? He’s caught up in the worship of
violence. Violence is a fetish in every
culture in the world today, although in some much more than in others. Handling instruments of death and
destruction, a person becomes as powerful as a god, for just a moment – and then
it’s over.

With the sun in Aries, this culture of violence is even more apparent
to all of us. We no longer live in a
world where the young are carried up a mountain and sacrificed to the gods with
an obsidian blade. But still, we
practice human sacrifice, and it’s a cause of great suffering.

Even in this fiery month, there’s one factor that might slow the
bloodshed, and that’s Mars turning retrograde.
Mars is the ruler of Aries, and it’s the planet of action, will,
physicality, desire, anger, combat, competition, blood and war. It retrogrades once every two years, and then
stays in apparent reverse motion for a little over two months.

Usually Mars makes a few aspects every month, and these aspects make it
visible. When it makes a soft aspect to
another planet, that planet is suddenly vitalized, and things get done. When it makes a hard aspect to another planet,
the planet has to struggle with some conflictive energy. Either way, the rough, fast energy of Mars comes
through.

But this month, Mars makes no aspects to any other planet. It hovers there, barely moving. In April, its function seems to be mainly
jinxing most plans to move forward. On
all sides, monkey wrenches will be thrown, and gears will grind. It takes a while to find the wrench, extricate
it, and get the engine fixed, and when that’s done, something else may break
down. There’s a pervasive uncertainty,
very different from Mars’ usual brashness.

This is not a particularly good month to attack anybody, especially
after mid-month. And when people do
attack each other, they’re likely to end up hurting themselves. But this doesn’t mean that people will stop
trying, since all this fiery energy seeks outlets. However, we may see more people burnt by their
own matches. For example, more of the
GOP front-runner’s insults could bounce back onto himself. More of his people may get busted for
enacting violence on people in the crowd.

The point of Mars retrograde is to turn us all away from business as
usual. How do we use our energy, our
passion, our will, our amazing physical bodies?
What are we doing with these resources?
When we come to a place where new beginnings are possible, what do we
choose to do? What doors do we
open? What paths do we create, leading
to which futures?

This is the month of the Aries new moon, always a great time to plan
the future. It’s the optimum time for planting
seeds, both literally and figuratively. It’s
a time of renewal for this world we’re living in, a place that’s abundant,
surprising, and beautiful. There’s so
much we can do here, and this is the time to experiment, to try new things, to
follow our inspirations.

With Mars retrograde, we will have to pause though, to look at the
situation in a different way, and sometimes even to refrain from whatever we
passionately desire in the moment. We
might have to attend to the things we’ve learned from the past. We might need patience, and a sense of
humor. We might have to take a lot of
deep breaths until an impulse passes, especially if the impulse involves
firearms. And if we can’t resist, and we
throw a punch, or lob an insult, we might need to step back, before the energy
comes around to us again.

The world is young, and full of vigor. All that we long for is before us. And also before us are the shadows, the
contradictions, the wounds and knotholes, everything that’s part of living. It’s never quite as simple as it appears at
first. It’s okay to hesitate, in this
moment, as we stand here and imagine the new world we are entering.

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Although it’s cold, it’s exhilarating to
walk outside and feel that fierce wind blowing away one season and bringing on
the next. March is always an amazing month,
since the return of spring never seems quite possible. Those naked, barren trees are like a
permanent feature of the landscape, but it won’t be long before it all comes to
life.

This month holds even more change than
usual. Not only are there two eclipses,
but the outer planets are involved in a dance led by Jupiter. There are indications of rebellion – Jupiter
is inconjunct Uranus, the planet of change.
There are hints of deeper reform – Jupiter is trine Pluto, planet of
long-term trends. And there’s financial
instability – Jupiter is square Saturn, planet of limitation. All this in one month.

With the surge of primaries and caucuses
in March, it’s clear that stakes are being raised, bets are being placed, and
winners and losers declared. But I think
that more is going on.

My own feeling is that the Republican
Party is in its death throes. It’s
becoming unhinged, dividing itself into two parties, at odds with each other. If they do give Trump the nomination, then a
big block of Republicans will split off, call themselves something different,
and run their own candidate. If they
manage not to nominate him, he’ll start his own movement of renegade
Republicans. My sense is that there are
people working out plans for both these eventualities, right now.

It figures that the Republican Party
would divide eventually. It’s been the
party of racists and millionaires, and what do these two constituencies have in
common? Not all that much. The goal of uber-wealthy families is to hang
on to their assets, and the goal of racists is to hold on to a perceived
personal superiority, even when it doesn’t benefit them in any way.

For the last fifty years, the
super-wealthy have used racism and misogyny as tools, sometimes overtly and
sometimes subtly, as ways to increase their own power and influence. Anything that makes money for them is branded
as good, and anything that distributes money more fairly – unions, public education, welfare, women’s
rights – is bad, or sometimes just terminally unhealthy, and is blamed on “those
people”. This has been the tactic that
created the modern Republican party.

But we live in something of a democracy,
and so politicians have had to come out in favor of the things that ordinary
(non-rich) people want. This requires
artfulness. They have to say “small
business” when they mean big corporations, “safety” when they’re talking about profit-driven
prisons, and “national security” when they’re trying to boost weapons dealers.

And now here comes a politician who has
none of that artfulness, and who threatens to collapse the whole structure by
being too obvious about it. He blurts
out racist and misogynist things instead of using the well-honed dog whistles
that his party has refined over the decades.
Even though he’s a millionaire himself, he doesn’t seem to have learned
the language very well. He doesn’t have
that millionaire sense of solidarity.

So, like an iceberg in Antarctica, the
Republican Party is going to calve. That
doesn’t mean we’ll be better off as a nation, although we could make some progress
during the time it takes for it – or the new party - to build itself up again.

And what about the eclipses of
March? The first one, a total solar
eclipse on March 8, has Jupiter in Virgo facing off against the sun, moon, Mercury
and Neptune in Pisces. This mass of Pisces
planets is like the solid dedication of true believers, who only need something
or someone who will fulfill their fantasies of deliverance.

This yearning to believe in something
has a lot to do with Trump’s success. He’s
the “Great White Hope”, a figure who can rescue the flawed dreams that have
been fed to white people in the US. We’ve
seen him in history before, and it doesn’t usually work out too well. But this figure has been known to do a lot of
damage before going down in flames.

On the other side of the wheel is Jupiter
in Virgo, which represents the principle of social organization. With Jupiter in an earthy sign, this is a practical
process, involving observation, good tools, and a certain amount of
trial-and-error. A static society is not
a healthy one, and so Jupiter in Virgo represents change that’s both logical
and ecological. Ideally, everything
grows organically and cooperatively. Of course,
for true believers, this is limiting and even boring.

Then on March 23, there’s a penumbral
lunar eclipse. It’s not quite as
intense, but because the sun is in the fire sign Aries, there are conflicts that
now move into the open. This eclipse
emphasizes the Aries/Libra axis, which is about independence vs. law. Rebellious movements could gain a foothold.

The Jupiter/Saturn square is very close,
and so there could also be an economic downturn around the time of this eclipse. This won’t necessarily last a long time, but
it’s a good idea to be a bit more frugal in March, in preparation for this. There could be a moment of reckoning when
many people have to figure out what to do about long-term commitments. Can we still afford to do the things we once
planned?

As a society, we may also have to look
at long-term plans. Saturn is in
Sagittarius, the sign of travel, so problems with roads and bridges may become
more evident, and perhaps very dangerous.
Funds will need to be diverted to deal with this, and where will these
funds come from? The millionaire class,
and their pet politicians, will join together with an obvious answer: let’s try again to get rid of health
care.

But Jupiter’s other aspects do point to
change, so there will be a regrouping. For
many of us, spring is a chance to sketch out the world we’d like to live
in. If nature can reinvent herself, why
can’t we? For myself, I’d like to see a
world with neither racists nor millionaires, but I think that will take more
than one season.

Monday, February 1, 2016

January was bleak, in more ways than one. Midway through the month, my family lost a brave,
smart woman to an aggressive cancer. Carol
was gone way too soon; she wasn’t even sixty.
And not long after she died, the whole world turned white, and the snow
pinned us in our houses.

So in February, I am ready to learn whatever it is I’m supposed to
learn from all this. I want the snow to
melt, making slow rivers on the sidewalks and the streets. And I want wisdom to seep into my mind, bit
by bit, so that I can make it through the rest of the winter, and whatever future
winters come my way.

Outside, as I write this, it’s warming, and I can hear the snow sliding
off the roof. On my desktop, there’s an
18th century painting: a lady in pale blue silk, with a long nose
and soft, mousy brown hair. Her name was
Elisabeth, and she looks calm and friendly as she sits for her portrait, as
relaxed as anyone could be under such a large, diaphanous hat.

For the painter, Adelaide Labille-Guiard, all that mattered then was
adding the right amount of green to the background, bringing out the pale tones
of the portrait. Neither of them knew
that seven years later, Elisabeth – who was sister to the king – would be beheaded
in the Reign of Terror, and Adelaide would be burning her canvasses of the
royal family, in order to save herself.

I look to Elisabeth for wisdom because her life and death are a closed
circle, 222 years in the past. Surely
when we see the entirety of a life, we can parse its meaning. Instead, I see a labyrinth of shifting fortunes,
love and loyalty, fear and pride. And
then there are larger weather systems that alter the paths of hundreds of
people, although each person falls as an individual.

Astrologers study closed circles all the time, mapping out the flow of
energy, correlating the shapes we see with other shapes from the past. But we are always feeling our way, because life
is an experiment that can never be replicated exactly. And the messages we read are always slightly
garbled, waiting for us to smooth them out and turn them into a reasonable probability.

Sometimes I resist this process of reading the chart, of making it
yield something practical. It often gives
useful information, but I always wonder what I’ve lost. What richer messages am I ignoring? What mysteries won’t yield to language?

Once I went to a workshop that presented the planets as literal gods, and
each birthchart showed the way we surrender to these gods. But most of us are not
willing to surrender, to give up our sense of autonomy, even when we sense we’re
surrounded by something looming and powerful.

January called to mind those hard and demanding gods. The month has been powerful, relentless, like
an avalanche of snow scouring a mountainside. And as we end the month, we’re stripped down
to our bones.

And this comes from Pluto, symbolic of the calloused hand of
destiny. It’s ironic that a dwarf planet
shows up when we have this feeling of being swamped by oversized fates which we
can’t control. But January was very Pluto-driven. First the sun conjuncted it, and then Mercury
slowed down to a crawl, and stationed right next to Pluto. As February begins, it’s still there, and when
Mercury eases away in a few days, Venus will move in and take its place.

How can one learn anything from these Pluto aspects? You’re just trying to survive. And yet this is when we learn things on the
deepest level, in our bones and teeth and hair. When we’re in survival mode, we’re trapped
in a room with our wildest and hungriest selves, and no formula will turn these
into docile pets. But at some point,
often years later, we honor the parts of ourselves that sacrificed everything,
that became unrecognizable, in order to show us the way out of that room.

About midway through February, Pluto
will stand alone once more. There will
be no planets conjuncting it, no henchmen to do its bidding. The sun, Mercury and Venus will all have moved
into Aquarius, and this is definitely a more hopeful and autonomous sign than
Capricorn. The focus will turn to friendship
and community. Suddenly, there will be
more room to move around, to try something new.

Aquarius allows objectivity, a certain distance between an experience and
its meaning. We don’t have to learn
everything through the body, through the hard and barren earth, through the
shovel and the rock. Knowledge will circulate more freely among people, and of
course, there will be plenty of clashes of opinion in February, because people never
agree on what’s true. And the further
you are from survival mode, the more truths there are.

And then on February 19, the sun will enter Pisces for the last, dreamy
month of winter. This is the month when
we all need our private escape routes, in order to imagine the green we’ve
forgotten. This is the month when people
leave their bodies without a whisper, hoping that there are other worlds with
flowers and soft breezes. But this is
also the time when we incubate whatever we want to be born in the spring.

For now, we’re buffeted by winter, and it’s all too real. It may be too soon to say what we’ve
learned. All we can do is hunker down and
study the face of time. It’s the devil
we know all too well, and the wisdom we always gain the hard way.

Thursday, January 7, 2016

After the
glitz of Christmas, it’s hard to settle down into a winter and a new year. The rituals connected with the holidays and
the year’s turning have left me sensitized, sentimental, and also a little
vulnerable.

The first
week of 2016 has gone by, and I’m sitting at my desk, staring out at the
late-afternoon dusk, and thinking about the rest of the year. So far, 2016 seems lean and still, like the
grey and brown landscape out my window. When
I see a squirrel or a bird, I feel grateful for that dash of movement.

It feels
almost sacrilegious to be speaking out in this winter wrap of silence. It seems to ask for quiet, for acceptance,
for humility in the face of its inexorable rhythms. What can I say about the year to come?

At about
that moment, writer’s block came crashing down, and I opened facebook. I went to my brother’s page to find out what
is going on with him, and he’d posted something about political correctness,
and I answered at length from a feminist perspective, and then someone posted a
counterpoint to something I said from a transgender perspective and then I
wrote a response, and then I thought, what the heck am I doing?, and erased it. Clearly I do not have writer’s block if I can
go on like this.

So here I am
again, on this page, trying to wrap my brain around 2016. Yes, it looks like we’ll have many of the
same old struggles this year. Pluto is
about halfway through Capricorn, and so I would say we’re about halfway through
what the history books will call the Age of the Corporations. They’ll describe this as the period between
2008 and 2023, when the wealth and power of corporations reached such extremes
that a new form of feudalism was created, and then quite suddenly, the whole
structure collapsed.

Of course,
neither the build-up of corporate power nor the collapse happen alone. Corporate power will be weakened by a great pack of termites, in the
form of legal work, revolutionary movements, and political efforts. Notice how I moved from the past tense to the
present there. That’s because we’re
living it now, this year. But it is
useful to keep checking in with a historical perspective, and that’s the gift
of astrology – to offer a larger sense of the cycles. Of course, interpretation is always the
product of one mind, firmly rooted in her own time.

But 2016 is
definitely a year of struggle. The year
begins with an angry aspect, the square of Mercury and Mars, as Mercury retrogrades. This can bring up a lot of old blood feuds. Then there’s the Uranus/Pluto square, which has
been going on (off and on) since 2012, and it’s in orb during the first three
months of this year. It makes for more
extremes, a stronger tendency to push and to resist. So throughout this winter, there will be
lines drawn in the sand, literally and figuratively. We see
this happening right now in Oregon, as a small right-wing attempt at a coup
develops.

The other
hard aspect this year is the Saturn/Neptune square, and we already saw this in
operation in November and December of 2015.
It manifested as a surge of fear, mainly directed towards refugees,. It will be back in 2016 for a much longer
time, between May and October, so we’ll be dealing with a period of continuing
delusions and anxieties.

Archetypically,
you can see this Saturn/Neptune square in various ways. One way would be the clash between the old
people and the strangers. Saturn represents
the established structure of things, guarded by the old people. Neptune represents the stranger: anyone who seems odd, fey, peculiar, or
disquieting. Since I’m an old person and
can easily disguise any tendency to be peculiar when I’m out in public, I do
have to think about my own biases and assumptions. I have to look at what I spend energy
preserving.

At the same
time, Saturn is the planet of tradition, and the oldest of traditions can be
especially valuable, having to do with respecting the earth and practical human
experience. Saturn can be about
survival. And Neptune can represent mesmerizing
fantasies, dreams, and our tendency to lie to ourselves and to distract
ourselves with glitter, lights and toys.

Neptune can
also be about the pull of religion, the tendency to make up dream figures and then
insist that everybody bow before them. Saturn
can counter that with knowledge of the earth and its basic laws. As global warming advances, Saturn could be a
good defense, since it’s about paring back, cutting back on the waste of
resources.

At the same
time, Neptune can be about spiritual awareness, the knowledge that there is way
more going on than we can take in, with our limited senses. And Saturn can be skeptical, even
cynical. Saturn is a planet of winter,
and has a hard time recognizing that spring will eventually come.

So in 2016
we’ll work on the interplay between what is established and what is strange, in
many different ways. The war between the
secular approach and the dogma of religion will have many fronts. People will come to terms with their fear of
those who are different, and the gender continuum will become ever more
apparent, and unsettling to some folks.

At the same
time, there need to be some touchstones, some caution, when it comes to diving
into both seductive dreams and alienating hallucinations. We need people who will say, “This isn’t real,”
and then we need to talk seriously about whether what we’re seeing is just a
stray dream floating into our collective consciousness, or the first dim shadow
of a new paradigm.